Michael Behe on the Design Idea That Won’t Go Away (and Shouldn’t)

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On a new episode of ID the Future, Jonathan Witt catches up with Darwin’s Black Box author and biochemist Michael Behe at the 2020 Dallas Conference on Science & Faith, where the two discuss an idea that many wish would just go away, but hasn’t. Download the podcast or listen to it here. Charles Darwin himself told us how his evolutionary theory could be overturned: identify a biological system that couldn’t possibly have evolved by “numerous success successive slight modifications.” It’s to Darwin’s credit that he put his theory in “empirical harm’s way,” to quote philosopher Del Ratzsch. But as Witt and Behe note, Darwin also cleverly placed the burden of proof on his opponents, an arguably dubious maneuver given that his proposed evolutionary mechanism has never once been observed…
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Looking Forward to Darwin Day? Check Out the Trailer for Behe’s Secrets of the Cell

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For Darwin Day, February 12, we are a launching a new five-part series with biochemist Michael Behe, Secrets of the Cell. You can see the splendid trailer now: It was Dr. Behe’s insight that the view of evolution as driven by unguided, purposeless processes alone can’t survive an up-close encounter with the “black box,” unknown to Charles Darwin, the cell. Celebrate Darwin’s birthday by coming here, to Evolution News, next Wednesday and sharing the secrets of life, in a beautiful and accessible new series, widely with your friends and family. The post Looking Forward to Darwin Day? Check Out the Trailer for Behe’s <i>Secrets of the Cell</i> appeared first on Evolution News.
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Coming on Darwin Day, a New Video Series — Secrets of the Cell with Michael Behe

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To reach ever-wider audiences of the skeptical and the unconvinced, whether in academia or the general culture, is the central mission of Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture. What better occasion for that could there be than Darwin Day, February 12? The birthday of the great man is an occasion each year for atheists and materialists to promote once again the theory of purposeless, unguided evolution. The cell is what biochemist Michael Behe has called a “black box,” its spectacularly complex, superbly designed contents unknown to Darwin himself. When the box was opened by modern science, it was the turning-point moment for the articulation of intelligent design theory. A revolution followed, fundamentally challenging how scientists discuss the history of life.  Revolutionary Behe With that in mind, this coming Darwin…
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A Forest, Not a Tree? Nelson Asks Why Universal Common Descent Needn’t “Pay” for Failures

biologists, Brian Miller, Evolution, evolutionists, failed predictions, forest, ID The Future, Intelligent Design, Michael Behe, Michael Denton, naturalism, orchard, Paul Nelson, Podcast, scientific theories, Teilhard de Chardin, theistic evolution, Tree of Life, universal common descent, universal genetic code
Philosopher of biology Paul Nelson recalls the expectation, a scientific standard when he was an undergrad, that all living things would turn out to share a universal genetic code. How could they not if, as Darwin argued, there is only a single, universal tree of life? On a classic ID the Future podcast with host Brian Miller, Dr. Nelson discusses the implications of this failed prediction. Download the podcast or listen to it here. The question is a weighty one since it has emerged that there is no universally shared code, but, instead, many variants. When evolutionists realized this, they performed a sidestep, supposing that since the prediction flopped, it must be the case that the code can itself evolve. But this deft move allows universal common ancestry a luxury…
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The Long View: Michael Behe Pays Tribute to Phillip Johnson

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On a new episode of ID the Future we continue a series of messages from a November 2019 symposium in Berkeley, California, presented in honor of the late Phillip Johnson, who played a crucial role in the flowering of the intelligent design movement. Download the podcast or listen to it here. On today’s episode Lehigh University biology professor Michael Behe, author of Darwin’s Black Box, The Edge of Evolution, and Darwin Devolves, tells about his earliest memories of Phillip Johnson and speaks about the long history of science: how ancient science pointed to purposeful design in life, and how current science is coming full circle. Considering this long view, the conclusion of design is as strong as or stronger than it has ever been. Photo: Phillip and Kathie Johnson at…
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Dallas Conference Youth Track — Intelligent Design for Kids

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I know that my own children, who are of middle and high school ages, have a rather, shall we say, incomplete understanding of the theory of intelligent design. Why would that be, considering that their dad is immersed in the subject? Well, in part because the science is challenging and the books for the most part are not written with kids, even smart kids, in mind. Nor are many of the lectures and videos you can listen to or watch.  Parents have brought this fact to our attention. So at last year’s Westminster Conference, in Philadelphia, we experimented with a separate youth track. It was such a wonderful success that we are doing the same thing at this month’s Dallas Conference on Science & Faith, January 25 in Denton, TX.…
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Dallas Conference Will Unveil Intelligent Design’s Original Edition

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We are just a couple of weeks out from the 2020 Dallas Conference on Science & Faith, Saturday, January 25 in Denton, TX. Until today, though, we have withheld one important piece of information about the event: it will be the launch of a wonderful new book from Discovery Institute Press. Actually, it’s an updated, expanded edition of a classic: The Mystery of Life’s Origin: The Continuing Controversy, the 1984 Ur-text or original edition of the modern theory of intelligent design, now with new supplementary essays by scholars extending the work. This is very exciting for us because the three co-authors, biochemist Charles Thaxton, materials scientist Walter Bradley, and geochemist Roger Olsen, will all be on hand for a panel discussion. To Spark a Debate The new edition includes the…
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Care for Appetizers? Electric Proteins, Spidey Sense, and More

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Welcome to the second day of the New Year! Like tasty sliders, these short news stories should get the juices flowing for big developments in 2020. Electric Proteins Dr. Stuart Lindsey at Arizona State University is an expert in single-molecule dynamics in biomolecules. Older methods of observing protein structure, such as X-ray crystallography, only gave single snapshots of the highly dynamic world, he says, where proteins rapidly change conformations and interact in complex ways. Electron transport has been well known in the cases of photosynthesis and metabolism. But a few years ago, his team was astonished to find that a run-of-the-mill protein conducted electricity. The protein was acting like a wire! Further observations revealed that all proteins conduct electricity — even the ones that had “weren’t designed to do this”—…
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#1 of Our Top Stories of 2019: Informed by Discovery Authors, Yale’s David Gelernter Rejects Darwinism

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Editor’s note: The staff of Evolution News wish you a Happy New Year! We are counting down our top ten stories of 2019. If you haven’t done so yet, please take a moment now to contribute to our work in bringing you news and analysis about evolution, intelligent design, and more every day of the year. There is no other voice, no other source of information, like ours. Thank you for your friendship and your support! The following article was originally published here on October 21, 2019. This is important. Yale University computer scientist David Gelernter is a polymath, a brilliant writer, artist, and thinker. Famed both for his specific scientific expertise, and for his cultural, political, and historical reflections, he’s also now a confessed Darwin skeptic. More than a…
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#6 of Our Top Stories of 2019: Polar Bear Seminar

APOB, blood stream, Cell (journal), cholesterol, computer analysis, Darwin Devolves, Evolution, high fat diet, Liu et al. (2014), medical literature, Michael Behe, mutations, polar bear, Polar Bear Seminar, PolyPhen-2, Shiping Liu
Editor’s note: The staff of Evolution News wish you a Happy New Year! We are counting down our top ten stories of 2019. If you haven’t done so yet, please take a moment now to contribute to our work in bringing you news and analysis about evolution, intelligent design, and more every day of the year. There is no other voice, no other source of information, like ours. Thank you for your friendship and your support! The following article was originally published here on May 6, 2019. Recent months have witnessed a debate between Michael Behe and his supporters, on one hand, and Behe’s critics on the other, over arguments in his book Darwin Devolves about mutations in polar bear genes. The discussion has now come to end. Having heard…
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